Well, good luck! And keep us posted as to progress, please. This stuff is fascinating to me even though I've never tried to build anything like it myself.
Pyrel - an open-source rewrite of the Angband roguelike game in Python.
Is the rPi a realtime device? I'm not familiar with it, but if it's meant to be a computer-on-a-chip running a "normal" OS then it's going to have much less reliability when it comes to timing than you'd like. Unfortunate.
Pyrel - an open-source rewrite of the Angband roguelike game in Python.
I'm curious about the Minotaur fights. The Minotaur leaps backwards when it's almost dead, which delays the beginning of its death animation considerably. Is that leap just on a timer? Or is it caused by taking damage? In the latter case, if you started attacking when you were closer to the Minotaur then you might be able to kill it before it finishes its leap, which would speed up the fight significantly.
Pyrel - an open-source rewrite of the Angband roguelike game in Python.
And it's not a million dollars; it's whatever marginal extra money they have after paying for all of the stretch goals "beneath" it (like the extra levels, new game plus, making-of video, etc.). There's $300k between it and the next-lowest stretch goal, which means that in the worst case, that $300k (minus Kickstarter fees and taxes) is all they have to achieve that goal. Probably they'd have funds left over from other stretch goals, assuming they're remotely competent accountants and don't hit any major unexpected challenges, but they still won't have a million dollars spare for that job.
Not that I'm a game developer, but I'd figure you're talking about, oh, 3-8 man-months of developer time to handle the ports and fix bugs, which bugs are found by many more man-months of QA time. And that's on top of the fees they have to pay to each console company to get their game listed.
Pyrel - an open-source rewrite of the Angband roguelike game in Python.
Approval and also maintenance of the game after release are both very expensive. For example, Microsoft charges a flat fee of something like $40,000 for each patch you make after the first one, regardless of how big a company you are. A company like EA can easily afford to push multiple patches for their games, but a small indie company doesn't have that kind of luxury.
That pitch video was amusing. It'll be interesting to see if the game lives up to it; I've no doubt it'll get funded.
Pyrel - an open-source rewrite of the Angband roguelike game in Python.
The replay controller sounds like an excellent idea for conveying that TASes are not "cheated", i.e. they play within the game's logic. It'd be totally useless for conveying what making a TAS is like, but that's fine.
Another possible idea might be some way of having an input display. Just an array of LEDs hooked up to the buttons or something so people can see the input that the controller is sending.
Pyrel - an open-source rewrite of the Angband roguelike game in Python.
^how are those times compared to the real-life TAS bot thing? are they more accurate or less?
There's an inherent misconception in this question. Both are inaccurate compared to a real N64, but getting "closer" to the real time doesn't mean that it is more accurate. It simply means that the randomly different amount of time mupen64plus gets due to inaccuracy happens to be closer than mupen's randomly different amount of time due to inaccuracy.
So the real question is, how much error is there in this emulator compared to the old one? :)
Pyrel - an open-source rewrite of the Angband roguelike game in Python.
Ah, damn. That's unfortunate. I have no coding juice to spare for side projects, either, so I'm unlikely to be able to help out. I wish you luck! It's a very nice TAS.
Pyrel - an open-source rewrite of the Angband roguelike game in Python.
Very nice. :) Plenty of really tight play. Maybe some brief playaround moments were missed (e.g. with the lumpy Meat Boy clones in the Rapture), but since there's so little waiting time I hardly think it matters. Go on and submit it!
Pyrel - an open-source rewrite of the Angband roguelike game in Python.
So the route would be something like 1) get lamp; 2) glitch to Dark World, temper Lv1 sword into Lv2 sword; 3) glitch to Dark World fairy fountain, upgrade to Lv3 sword; 4) kill Ganon. Or am I missing something? Can you OoB to the fairy fountain or do you still need to beat dungeons 5 and 6 for the super bomb?
Pyrel - an open-source rewrite of the Angband roguelike game in Python.
Okay, the clip I was thinking of for LUCK manipulation is here (link to start of fight; the entire fight is full of crits). It's not quite as extreme as I was remembering, but it's still something like 75% critical hits, which has got to be an obvious anomaly. :)
Pyrel - an open-source rewrite of the Angband roguelike game in Python.
Regarding overlaying a "primary" soundtrack on top of the game sound, I have trouble believing that this can be done without the game music conflicting badly with the soundtrack. I'm willing to be proven wrong, but it just doesn't seem like it'd work well.
In my opinion we'd be better-served with a soundtrack replacing the game sound except for one or maybe two points in the video where sound is especially relevant to the play (e.g. cutting out so we can hear the announcer yelling "GOAL! GOAL! GOAAAAAL!" in Superstar Soccer).
Pyrel - an open-source rewrite of the Angband roguelike game in Python.
I got 2 comments:2. This may sound kinda dumb, but is there anyway to kill Mother Brain first?
You can use the X-Ray Climb glitch to get into Tourian without killing any of the other bosses, as the any% run does. And you can easily get enough gear to kill her before killing any of the other bosses. However, so far as I'm aware, killing her directly causes the planet-blows-up sequence. Even if you ignore the time limit this imposes, you get locked out of almost all of the map, including the locations of all of the other major bosses.
You might possibly be able to reset the game state to void the planet-blows-up sequence, using the Space-Time Beam glitch. That would require figuring out how to get the Plasma beam without killing Draygon (the giant green shrimp boss). Of course, resetting with that glitch would also reset Mother Brain to being alive again...
Pyrel - an open-source rewrite of the Angband roguelike game in Python.
A good demonstration of luck manipulation would be one of the Harmony of Dissonance boss fights (not with Maxim, but the other guy). I know at least one of the published TASes has a string of like 5-6 "CRITICAL!" messages all onscreen at the same time -- I think it was used as the publication screenshot.
Pyrel - an open-source rewrite of the Angband roguelike game in Python.
Grincevent's point is an excellent one. 10 minutes of nonstop high-impact TAS action is going to be exhausting to watch. There should be some consideration given to pacing. Most clips IMO should be relatively lengthy, to give the viewer time to figure out what's going on and why what they're being shown is unusual. I'd also suggest grouping most of the clips thematically. For example:
* Start off with clips that show off precision and planning -- "normal play, except without mistakes". End with a close-up/slow-mo section of some incredibly tight maneuvering -- perhaps Gradius where the Vic Viper passes entirely through thin terrain and dodges lots of bullets?
* Switch to talking about breaking the game -- i.e. glitchfest section. Possibly show in this section a "fully kitted-out" emulator with RAM watch, hitboxes, etc. to give some idea of how these glitches are found and abused. Culminate the glitchfest with a well-known game doing something very unexpected. My personal vote here would be SMW glitching to the end, but there are several contenders.
* Switch to emphasizing amusement. Show off some playarounds doing funny things. The SMB3 playaround shell games, something from Scribblenauts (giving a chainsaw to the hairdresser?), Family Feud, I'm sure there are plenty more though I'm having trouble thinking of specific examples. I'd say the culmination of this section should be International Superstar Soccer with the announcer going "OH NO! OWN GOAL?!" over and over again. Of course, you'd have to cut the music for this bit.
I do think it's reasonable to have, say, a minute's worth of short clips at the end. This would be a good time to show off the variety of games that have been TASed. I think most of the video should be showing off well-known games, since that helps the user in recognizing what's going on and why the TAS is so unusual. However, this section, since the clips are so short, doesn't need to do that, and can diversify more.
Also, a suggestion for music: I think a TAS promotional video is much better-served by being lighthearted and silly than by being over-the-top melodramatic. So I'd suggest tunes like e.g. the SMB2 main level theme rather than, say, O Fortuna.
Pyrel - an open-source rewrite of the Angband roguelike game in Python.
Regardless of optimization level, the concept for this run sounds incredibly boring to me. I wasn't a fan of horizontal underflow in the existing runs, so a run that consists solely of horizontal underflow is not appealing. I grant that others may well feel differently though.
Pyrel - an open-source rewrite of the Angband roguelike game in Python.
Thanks for the encode, Omnigamer! That was a pretty awesome run. Plenty of abuse of mechanics and dodgy hitboxes, and that pause glitch, which I'd not seen before.
I look forward to seeing the final run on the workbench. :)
Pyrel - an open-source rewrite of the Angband roguelike game in Python.
